Apologies for the delay. I’ve been on the road a bit. I spent two days in the New York City area attending WiredSafety’s Cyberbullying event. And then visiting with internet safety colleagues in Washington DC. All the running around made my efforts to get in the front of the computer and compose rational thought more difficult than usual.
Some observations from the Cyberbullying event:
It is cyberbullying when it is kid against kid; when adults are involved on either side, it’s cyberstalking or cyberharassment.
Ironically, it took adult involvement to create our most infamous cyberbullying victim - Megan Meier.
We lose about 14 children a year to suicides brought on by vicious cyberbullying.
A common mistake that can lead to cyberbullying is to share your password, even for a gaming website. 75% of 8-9 year old children in a WiredSafety study (performed by kids with kids) were found to have shared a password at least once. Sharing your password increases risk of cyberbullying but also sets a bad precedent for protecting all forms of personal information.
Some of the reasons kids don’t tell a parent about cyberbullying: fear of overreaction by the parent; it would be embarassing; the parents would talk about it and it would spread around; the child thinks they can handle it themselves; the parents would take away the computer, the internet or restrict it in some way; loss of trust (the parents would think their child too immature in some way); parents would find out child had broken rules (visiting forbidden sites, online at forbidden times of day, talking to strangers, etc.); might increase the bullying; might be only a temporary problem with a friend but the parents would hate the friend permanently…